1981 LeBaron coupe - from the ground up.

ill have to go out and find one of those dashes and see what i can come up with for ya...the decal work is easy enuf...odds are your going to have to re-locate the board behind the area to make space for the tach..unless you find a modern tach from a newer car to stuff in there..maybe a minivan tach? there about the size you need and rather thin....as a bonus the whole face peals off and your left with a plexiglass like piece of plastic

i know you probably want aftermarket for the higher acuracy but by the sounds of it that may not be the best route to go
 
No, man... seriously. You really need to take the dash out of one of these cars to see what I'm up against. The "cluster" is actually three different panels hidden behind a single bezel (one panel is the rear-defrost switch, and wipers on some models). The circuit board is mounted to the dash structure, which on the F/M/J-body cars is a huge plastic substrate--and it's a bitch to remove. There's a hell of a lot more to the structure than the old metal panels used on A/B/E-bodies, so I don't have the wide-open spaces behind the cluster I to which I'm accustomed from playing with the old stuff. So, needless to say, there's nowhere to move the circuit board, unless I hack out and plastic-weld an amazing amount of plastic in a new location. This is a shot that sort-of illustrates what I'm talking about--here's the dash with the speedo part of the cluster removed, and if you look through the cable hole, you'll see there's a wall behind it. Also, you can see the premium of space for a tach-motor hole, as it has to be centered in all those bulbs and contacts to the right of the circuit board:

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Though the steering wheel's in the way, this is a decent shot of the cluster assembled with no bezel. It's pretty clear where I want the tach, but there are turn-signal indicators and idiot lights in the black band around the gauge, and I want them all to function as original. I'm sure I'm gonna end up with some LEDs to make it fit, but even so, space is at a premium in this arrangement:

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i see what your up against..go find yourself a caravan/voyager(1st gen) tach useualy found in 5spd's and turbo's..but ive seen em in plane jane minivans as well...its a compact unit with a TINY motor..i think there are also some bishi's and 90's turbo cars that had the same type of tach(90's turbo is what i got my boost/tach setup out of for my turbo caravan)...hell i bet a minivan gas guage would fit in one of the idiot light holes too

yes the face wont be right ..but nothing some vynle cant solve

here is my boost swap in under my tach...i really think a mopar minivan dash parts will work great for ya
 

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I'll look into that tach. How can I make it function with the V8's tach signal? The face I'm not worried about, because I plan on using the fuel-gauge's face so the adapted tach will bolt in like a factory piece.

The fuel gauge out of a 3rd-gen Charger Rallye cluster is just about perfect, so I'm not too worried about that.

I have some more progress pics from last weekend that I'll post later, but for the record I didn't even open the garage this weekend... too busy partying like it was 1988. :D
 
Here's a few more pics from a week or two back. These holes are going to be overlapped, since the undercoating will hide everything anyhow.

I'm pretty sure the guy who sold Chrysler their seam sealer was also a sheetmetal dealer. :D
 

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It was pretty humid the day I started removing the paint and undercoating... yes, that's a drop of water on the end of the crankshaft. The condensation was amazing.

Almost all cleaned up... check out the fine quality of late-'70s/early-'80s Chrysler panel stampings. :doh:

Oh, and before you ask, the reason the bumper-mount bolt is still there is because I haven't yet found an impact that can remove it... tried one from a big-rig shop that they use to remove semi lug nuts, and it couldn't budge that rear mounting bolt on either side of the car. Astounding.
 

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All welded up... no, they're not pretty, but they're effective. I want the car to be stiffer than a wedding dick when I'm done.

Oh, and make sure you decide to do this type of thing before you finish the engine bay. :doh:

:D


I also found a better pic of the instrument cluster. It's readily apparent where I want the tach in this shot.
 

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What the twelve spot welds weren't enough for you??....:D

Did these M-bodies ever come with a tach from the factory? Especially in that brushed stainless it would look KILLER....[smilie=i:
 
I think so, too... but it's not gonna be easy. Read the subsequent posts to see the difficulties involved. :doh:
 
Wel I read through the "MISSED" posts and I can see the dilema...I think 69.5 might be onto something with the tach from the minivan or turbo car...

What about an electronic tach..if that is even an option? I'm not sure what is available but sure someone somewhere might have something that could work.
 
:doh:

If you were talking about a digital tach, no... it's absolutely not an option. I don't like digital gauges, one reason being that digital readouts require interpretation whereas the position of an analog needle is much more quickly recognized by the human eye.

Besides, a digital tach would be cheating. :D

I did briefly think about using a repro 1968-'69 B-body "postage stamp" tach in an unused rectangular opening in the dash but the face wouldn't match the rest of the cluster... and let's face it, that setup sucked in its original application. It's just too bloody small.
 
getting a tach adapter 4-6-8 is no big deal....its just not always cheep(40+)...i still stand by my statement of a modern mopartack mechanics should fit with out to much fus
 
Finally picked up my Moog™ upper and lower ball joints today, after having ordered them over a month ago. I now have everything to rebuild the front end of the car, with the exception of swaybar links and mount bushings... I'm shopping for polyurethane for those.

I was also able to grab one of my weight-reducing "sleeper" tricks: Wagner HP-series headlamp bulbs for both low- and high-beam positions. These babies are made of impact-resistant plastic rather than glass and are roughly ¼ of the traditional glass bulbs' weight. It may be an insignificant amount (a couple of pounds), but every little bit helps and it's all off the most-forward part of the car. They also have a lifetime warranty against failure. :dance: The low beams were the last two in our system.
 
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